Nothing New Under the Sun

Sodom and Gomorrah Redivivus

Modern Israel has no direct connection or relationship to the covenant people of biblical Israel.  Those who assert such a connection are sadly misled.  The Israel of God broke the Covenant with God, and so fell under the curses of that Covenant.  After Solomon, the kingdom of Israel split; the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians in 720BC.  This was declared by the Living God to be divine judgment on the northern kingdom for their idol worship.  In Deuteronomy 28, He had long ago warned them that this would be the outcome if Israel were ever to break the Covenant in a perpetual and systemic way.

But it shall come about, if you will not obey the Lord your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes which I charge you today, that all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. . . . The Lord will cause you to be defeated before you enemies; you shall go out one way against them, but you shall flee seven ways before them, and you shall be an example of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth. . . . A people whom you do not know shall eat up the produce of your ground and all your labors, and you shall never be anything but oppressed and crushed continually. . . . Therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord shall send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things; and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you. . . . And it shall come about that as the Lord delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the Lord will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you shall be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. Moreover, the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth; and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, which you or you fathers have not known. 
Deuteronomy 28:15ff.

The remaining portion of biblical Israel, Judah continued on for another hundred years or so, but it also ended up denying the Lord, breaking His covenant, and consequently fell under the curses of the Covenant.  Babylon laid siege, killed, and took captive the majority of the remaining people.  Jerusalem fell in 586BC.  Although a remnant continued, and some exiles returned from Babylon to Judah, Israel essentially remained under foreign control, subjugated firstly by the Babylonians, then the Medo-Persians, then the Macedonians under Alexander, then the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, then, finally the Romans.  Biblical Israel continued to live under the curses of the Covenant, a shadow of its former spiritual glories. 

Its final end was pronounced by our Lord around AD30, when He declared that "your house (not, not God's house) is being left to you desolate."  (Matthew 23: 38.)  That desolation came into reality during the final Roman sieges of AD66-70, when Judah and Jerusalem were relentlessly and implacably scourged.  From that time on, the curses of the Covenant were perpetual, and the Israel of God was no more to be found in the land and territory of Israel. 

The existence of the modern secular nation state of Israel has nothing to do, then, with biblical, Old Covenant Israel.  It is just one more nation state.  The fact that millions of modern Christians believe that modern Israel is somehow connected with the ancient people and kingdom and continues under the blessing and promises of God to Abraham,  Moses, David and to His only begotten Son, our Lord is regrettable.  They are mistaken and misled.  Modern Israel is far more a modern manifestation of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Those who think that the Living God is bound under covenant oath to protect and prosper modern Israel need to take off their blinkers.  God will not be mocked.  Consider this report published in the Sydney Morning Herald. 

Over the rainbow as gays party hard in the Holy Land

Harriet Sherwood
June 12, 2011 

RAINBOWS were everywhere - on faces, belts, T-shirts, paper fans, tattoos and hats. One man had a python draped around his neck, a soldier in uniform carried a rainbow flag, and a young woman, almost naked, danced to the throbbing music, oblivious to the crowds and the searing heat.

Thousands of people poured onto Tel Aviv's Gordon Beach at the end of the annual Gay Pride parade in celebration of sexual freedom, tolerance and their city's ambition to be the most gay-friendly place on earth.
''The weather is hot, the guys are hot, it's a hot city,'' said 28-year-old Amit Margalit, wearing turquoise shades and matching beads over his bare chest.

Organisers of Friday's parade estimated that more than 100,000 Israelis, plus another 5000 tourists, took part. Every square metre of shade was crammed, friends greeted one another with sweaty kisses and hugs, stalls selling ice-cold beer were doing brisk trade and traffic jams backed up around closed streets.
Tel Aviv, in sharp contrast to Jerusalem, is a liberal, hedonistic and secular city, where leisure life revolves around beaches, cafes and nightclubs.  Lonely Planet named it one of its top three cities in the world for 2011, describing it as ''the flipside of Jerusalem, a modern Sin City on the sea rather than an ancient Holy City on a hill'' and adding: ''There are more bars than synagogues, God is a DJ and everyone's body is a temple.'' (Emphasis, ours).   The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rarely on the radar.

According to Tel Aviv's 30-year-old deputy mayor, Asaf Zamir, about 17 per cent of the city's 403,000 population is gay. ''It's a very strong community here, a comfortable arena for the gay community. Two men walking hand in hand is a very normal thing,'' he said.  The city municipality funded a gay centre and was promoting gay tourism, he added.

Shai Doitsch, a spokesman for Aguda, Israel's national gay organisation, said lesbians and gay men were not confined to specific bars or clubs. ''We really are a gay city,'' he said. ''There are no special gay areas - if you are gay or lesbian, you are welcome everywhere.''  Pictures of lesbians were given equal billing to gay men in promotional material for this year's parade, lesbian activist Anat Nirsaid said, adding: ''This is unique. If you look at most cities' Pride publications, you always see men at the front.''  But there was still a need for campaigning in Israel, Mr Doitsch said. ''We're not in paradise yet,'' he said. ''Jerusalem is a very sensitive place. We don't expect to have gay pride parades in Mea Sharim [an ultra-orthodox area of that city].''
Jerusalem hosts an annual Gay Pride march, which is a much more political event than the Tel Aviv celebration.  

Note carefully the headline: if modern Israel is indeed the Holy Land, "holy" will have taken on the denotation of ancient Jericho, which was declared "holy" because it had been consigned to devastation and judgment.